Record rains dampen state's economy; the Minnesota legal link to a Redskins loss; more on Minnesotans fighting jihad in Syria

Rising waters pose hardshipsFarm fields are ponds, roads flow like rivers, the ground is saturated and homes and farmers are bracing for even more rain from the Iowa border to International Falls.

Business bottom lines threatenedIn St. Louis County alone there are something like 15,000 sandbags in place at Kabetogama and lakes nearby. At Sandy Point Lodge, the guests have been happy to pitch in with sandbag placement.

More climate science, more arguingBob Collins writes on NewsCut: "At this point, the anthropological exercise of watching people's inability to accept data that conflicts with their previously-held, usually-not-researched position is far more fascinating" than the data itself.

Weather service tells TV channel to back offDuring Monday night's tornado scare in Nebraska and Iowa, the Weather Channel TV meteorologists told people in the Sioux City area to evacuate. It's not a call that's the TV channel's to make, and similar advice from TV stars in the past has clogged roads and left people in the path of a tornado. The National Weather Service is not pleased.

'Pink slime' is making a comebackJust don't call it "pink slime." Cargill spokesman Mike Martin says the product is 100 percent lean beef trimmings treated with citric acid to kill bacteria. Do you have a beef with that?

Colleges struggle to help homeless studentsCollege can be a hard course for anyone, but it's doubly difficult for students who must grapple with school and find a place to sleep each night. An estimated 2,500 Minnesota college students are homeless. It's a group largely unnoticed and unaided on campuses.

Trademark board rules against Redskins nameThe 2-1 ruling comes after a campaign to change the name has gained momentum over the past year. The team doesn't immediately lose trademark protection and is allowed to retain it during an appeal.

Trademark rule was engineered in Minn.Minneapolis lawyer Stephen Baird wrote a paper while he was still in college contending that the Redskins trademark is illegal because you can't trademark something that disparages people.

Wolf at the door: 'Fargo' recap, season finaleAn outstanding conclusion to the series. Most long-form stories -- particularly morality plays, as this has inevitable turned out to be -- have to choose between being unpredictable and being satisfying. Fargo's finale manages both. Aside from pulling Molly off the ice in the final period, that is.

Fewer women are having labor induced earlyWhile those last few weeks in the oven may not seem like a big deal, groups including the March of Dimes and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warn that babies delivered even a few weeks before full term (39 to 40 weeks) can face short- and long-term health problems including feeding issues, breathing problems and developmental deficits.

Red fish, blue fish: Why the fleshy rainbow?From red to white to orange to blue, fish flesh can land almost anywhere on the color spectrum. What's behind this huge variation? A lot of things -- from genetics to bile pigments. And parsing the rainbow can tell us something about where a fish came from, its swimming routine and what it ate.

Benghazi politics follow suspect's captureDoes the capture of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a key suspect in the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks, alter the political polarity of the episode? If so, the change wasn't immediately apparent. While Republicans said Tuesday they welcomed the news, they also made clear that their suspicions toward President Obama on all things Benghazi were far from assuaged.

Student suspended over tweet sues school districtThe lawsuit filed by Reid Sagehorn alleges the defendants violated his constitutional rights by suspending and forcing him to withdraw from school four months before he was expected to graduate. Sagehorn is seeking unnamed monetary damages and other legal relief.